New Delhi: The oxygen concentrator helps to supply oxygen in rural areas and overcome the shortage of oxygen.
A team of researchers at Bengaluru-based Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), an autonomous institute under the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, has designed a robust, mobile oxygen concentrator that can be used in rural settings and be rapidly deployed in emergencies in any location.
The second wave of COVID-19 had witnessed an acute shortage of medical oxygen in different parts of the country. While the crisis in the bigger cities was more about responding by overcoming supply chain limitations, in smaller cities and villages, the crisis exposed a chronic lack of medical oxygen infrastructure.
Overcoming the crisis required combining the advantages of personalized Oxygen concentrators for home uses with a capacity of 5 to 10 liters per minute (lpm) and Oxygen plants with a capacity of 500 lpm for large hospitals. The 500 lpm plants for hospitals are robust. But they lacked the portability required for deployment in resource-poor settings. Personal concentrators were portable but too delicate to be utilized in hospital settings regularly. There was a need for a robust technology with necessary portability.
The team at JNCASR has come up with a solution that meets the requirement, addressing the several novel design challenges posed for the sourcing of materials.
The device is based on the principles of Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) technology. The team replaced lithium zeolites (LiX) which is usually used in oxygen concentrators, with sodium zeolites which do not generate toxic solid waste and can be manufactured in India.
Although the science behind is well understood, developing an engineering solution that can work with sodium in a portable device and fill this specific market gap when there are severe sourcing problems posed engineering challenges. Obstacles had to be overcome at each stage of the cycle, from working with the available zeolites to effective ways of dehumidifying and designing the right adsorption-pressure cycle.
Named OxyJani, the device is modular and can deliver a range of solutions. It is an entirely off-grid solution that can facilitate deployment in rural areas. The waste from the plant can be potentially a good agricultural input material.
It was a collaborative effort involving several groups. JNCASR’s Dr. S. V. Diwakar, Dr. Meher Prakash, and Professor Santosh Ansumali collaborated with University of Alberta’s Professor Arvind Rajendran and Eiwave DigiTech’s Mr. Arun Kumar. Mr. Ritwik Das, an MS student, assisted in the project’s completion. Technical help was offered by Prof. M. Eswaramoorthy, Prof. Tapas Maji, and Prof. Sridhar Rajaraman, JNCASR President Professor G. U. Kulkarni, and IIT Kanpur Professor Amitabha Bandyophyay guided development initiatives. The financial assistance for the prototype was provided through JNCASR and the Nidhi Prayaas scheme of IIT Kanpur. The zeolite material used in the development of the device was obtained as a donation from Honeywell UOP, Italy.
Courtesy: (India Science Wire)
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